The giant 'bio-titans' barrages are becoming more effective, and four more Baneblades are wiped away in a flurry of tremendous acid-based shells. I fire back, felling one titan in a storm of Hellebore fire. Even as I do so, sensors register several impacts on my hull as Tyranid creatures make the three-meter leap over my chain-skirt and begin clawing at my durachrome armor. They vomit acid and other filthy secretions over my plating, which bubbles and hisses at the contact. It will take them a long time to eat through it, but in time they shall. If I were to give it to them.

I activate one of my last-ditch defense protocols, and one hundred thousand volts sears through my outer armor, frying the Enemy with a swift popping sound. Even as they die, several more jump on, and I am forced to use the electrical grid again. And again.

"Commander, we will exhaust power reserves within the next two hours at the current rate." I tell him. "We must either retreat or defeat the enemy soon."

"Agreed." He says, and stares harder at the screens.

I'm trying as hard as I can, but nothing occurs to me. I rack my brains for every scrap of tactical knowledge the last twenty years of service in the Imperial Guard has given me, but I can think of nothing that would help me here. I have more than enough firepower to destroy the main beasts controlling the horde, but they're still at least four kilometers away. At our current rate, Nika's reactors will no longer be able to replenish her capacitors before we reach half that distance. The Baneblades are in nearly as poor condition- although they have plenty of fuel, ammunition is running low at an alarming rate. We need to do something, but what?

It was at that moment that Mahud chose to come back up from the engine compartment. "I've replaced the wiring on the main drive motors and the power core— they looked like shit. What's going on?" He ogled the screens and hissed. "Maker! What happened?"

"It's the bio-titans." I explained. We can't reach them, and the Baneblades aren't maneuverable enough to dodge their shots. They're getting taken down one at a time."

"How is their fire so accurate?" Mahud asked, watching the biological projectiles slamming down in a perfect pattern around yet another Baneblade, blowing it into scrap.

"Tyranids all have a psychic link- they're controlled by something called the Overmind that coordinates their movements."

Mahud thought for a moment, then- "Can you open the hatch for a minute?"

"Are you crazy? You'd get slaughtered out there!"

"Not for me." Mahud replied. He pulled a small cloth packet out from a box that had been in a big crate down below.

"What the warp is that?" I asked.

"What's the worst that could happen?" He replied. "If we survive, I'll explain."

He had a point. "Alright, I'm opening the hatch." I told him, and he scrambled back towards the corridor. The hatch hissed open, and the spectacular roar of the battle avalanched through. There was the explosive thump of the Baneblades firing, the rattle of Nika's chain skirt, and above it all the hissing, screeching tide of Tyranids. Mahud threw the bundle out the hatch, which slammed closed once more. I watched through the pict-screens as it was ripped to shreds by the chain skirt, dissolving into a puff of orange-brown powder.

"I really hope that was the most poisonous substance known to man, because nothing else is going to work." I told him.

"Not…quite." Mahud admitted.

I watched as the brownish powder found its way onto the slobbering, hissing mouths of the insects swarming around us. For a good few seconds, there was absolutely no change, as the swarm continued tearing itself to shreds. But then a few tyranids backed away. They moved oddly, and after a moment I realized that their brain-cases were swelling. Chitin and bone cracked, and great mushy mounds of gray matter spewed forth in a frothing wave. Flecks of brownish powder came falling back out, and was devoured by more tyranids. By the time the Overmind realized what was happening, it was too late. Whatever the powder had done to the tyranids, it was spreading.

All across the rolling hills, I watched as the ocean of writhing insect flesh was torn open from the inside, thick yellow spinal fluid and purple-gray brain matter spewing forth in a frothing tide, pooling in the valleys.

"What the Throne of Terra did you do?" I demanded.

"It was melange." Mahud explained. "It expands the mind to see the future. Either it would have done this-" he waved at the carnage around us, "-or it would have made the enemy a thousand times smarter. I figured we'd be too dead to care if it was the latter."

"Holy Throne." I sighed. "Did you just gamble the fate of the human race on a fifty/fifty chance?"

"That's not a very optimistic way to look at it." Mahud retorted. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Just so we're clear, what exactly is 'it'?" I asked.

"Melange." Mahud gave me the look of a teacher who can't comprehend how stupid his students are. "How do you navigate space without it?"

"We have Navigators." I answered. They see into the warp and guide the ships with the Astronomican."

"We have Navigators as well." Mahud replied. "But they use this spice to navigate. It magnifies human psychic powers to an amazing extent. But in a less concentrated form you can use it in coffee and suchlike."

"Interesting." I said, trying not to breathe any of the stuff in. It turned out Mahud had packed an entire damned crate of the stuff belowdecks, kept in about two dozen of those little cloth packets. After what I'd seen it do to the Tyranids, I most certainly was not eager to experience it myself.

After a little convincing, I manage to make my Commander take a sample of the strange 'melange' substance and put it in my analyzers. It seems to be a shockingly complex organic compound, with numerous activation sites that do not conform to any similar chemicals in my databanks. The most similar chemicals I find are a combination of powerful hallucinogens and highly controlled neuroaccelerants. I calculate that the occurrence of such a chemical in nature to be possible, but the means by which it is produced must be very odd indeed.

After a few minutes to recover from the shock of suddenly surviving, my Commander makes the decision to return to the inquisitorial compound. The gates still gape wide from our dramatic exit, and I am able to navigate back through without much trouble. A small group of people awaits us as I pull to a stop. Strangely for a greeting party to a successful military excursion, they do not look pleased.

Nika came to a strop, and Mahud and I jumped out to report to the Inquisitor. I had expected to find him in the little greeting party, but he was strangely absent. Instead, a narrow-faced woman somewhere in her fifties approached Mahud and I, looking like a scholam teacher about to talk to a pair of particularly disobedient children.

"What did you do?" she demanded.

This was not exactly what I was expecting. "Using a powerful psyker drug of some sort, I think we overloaded the Overmind and killed the swarm using its own psychic link." I answered, glancing at Mahud when I mentioned the melange.

"Yes, that would do it." The narrow-faced woman agreed.

"Do what?" I asked. "Has something gone wrong?"

"You could say that. About a half an hour ago, every single psyker on this base just keeled over and died, except the Inquisitor, who is still in critical condition."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am." I said. "We wouldn't have done it if we knew."

"Yes, I'm sure." She sighed. "The only problem is the security system."

"The security system?" I asked. This could not possibly be good news.

"Yes. Due to the dangerous nature of the many experiments we conduct here, there are a series of bombs containing the Life Eater virus scattered across the planet. They possess a twenty-four-hour countdown clock which must be reset every day by a psychic message from a nearby planet. But the only way to trigger that message is by sending an all-clear from out own astropathic choir— the one you've just killed."

"You mean you built this place over a bunch of time bombs and now we can't turn them off?" Mahud demanded.

"That is essentially correct, yes." She agreed.

"For the love of—" I began, but stopped myself before I said something that would get me shot. Damn inquisitors and their security. "Is there anything we can do?" I asked instead. "Some way to disarm the bombs or…?"

"There is one way, yes." She replied. "It does require the use of your vehicle."

"Of course it does." I sighed. "What is it this time?"

"The only way to deliver the message without an astropathic choir is to deliver it in person." She explained. Only your vehicle possesses the necessary teleporter beacon, and the Magos tells me he can reconfigure the teleporter for interplanetary travel."

"Is that dangerous?" I asked.

"Very."

"Oh, good." I said, watching the sarcasm slide off her like sand off a sheet of glass. "Let's go."

I'm a guardsman, not a cog-boy, which meant that the next ten hours or so were mind-numbingly boring. I slept through a good portion of that time, and spent the rest of it scrounging for something to eat. Mahud seemed pretty interested though— I saw him sitting on Nika's hull, watching the tech-priests took apart huge chunks of machinery and rewired them to do Emperor-knows-what.

I knew my time was approaching as the tech-priests stopped taking stuff apart and started putting it all back together. There was a great deal of chanting and burned incense as the last few pieces were lifted into place.

At last, there was a contrabass hum and the garage where Nika rested took on a weird shimmery texture, the walls seeming to grow translucent. Mahud and I jumped aboard, slamming the hatches closed just in time for the inquisitor lady to pull the lever. "Thanks for the warning." I muttered sarcastically as the alarms all over Nika's console began blaring and flashing red.